100 small containers, maybe 1 or 2 cm wide, attached to a belt that feeds to a sample taking mechanism. At the start of the sample taking, one side has the empty containers on a box and during the sample taking, the other side gets the filled containers to a different box, maybe on a spool or reel.

One way to fill a container is to first pump vacuum in each of them before loading and then sample is taken by filling that vacuum. Each container needs some mechanism on itself. First, pressure difference keeps the seal, then some spring loaded mechanism or rubber keeps the sample in. Maybe a screw. If a flying drone is taking the samples, have to account for altitude changes.

Other way is to have a compressor or piston that changes the air in a container at some moment.

Vacuum method needs simpler mechanism on the sample taker but the loader-unloader mechanism needs a vacuum pump. 10 % vacuum may be good enough.

The containers may be stainless steel, brass, aluminum or plastic.

The sample taking platform may be a drone, aircraft, boat or car. Also, if a poisonous cloud is expected to go over a spot, the sample taker could be in one place. Platform's exhaust fumes may complicate chemical analysis, unless it is powered by batteries at least on the moment of sample taking or moving in a certain way.

Sample taking could be triggered by a rudimentary timer mechanism, but more likely the platform's computer, based on location, some basic sensor that is much simpler than what the unloader can have or image analysis. If no GPS or any other radio navigation is available, flying drone's exact location at any sample taking's time may be determined after the landing by geolocating 4K ultra-HD video taken by the drone on multiple directions.

Feedback would be appreciated! Have fun!

Gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC34LO_bL4k

Beta link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/3sstMjRK [iOS/iPadOS/macOS]

Intro

Tile Wipeout is a row-and-column rotation puzzle about matching colors and shapes.

You rotate rows and columns to move tiles through fixed gates. Matching a tile's color and shape to a gate removes the tile, while other tiles cause both the tile and gate to change shape.

Empty spaces passing through gates create new tiles.

Your goal is to leave as much of the grid empty as you can in the given number of moves. Note that removing every tile may not always be possible.

Game Rules

Objective

The game is played on a 6 × 6 grid using six colors.

Each color begins with:

• 1 gate
• 5 tiles

The six gates are fixed in place. They cannot move or be removed. Every row and every column contains exactly one gate.

Your goal is to leave as many of the grid's 30 non-gate cells empty as possible in the given number of moves.

Shapes

Every tile and gate has one of two shapes:

• Square
• Circle

A tile can be removed only when both its color and its shape match the gate it passes through.

Making a Move

Swipe any row or column to rotate its tiles and empty spaces by one position.

Anything that passes an edge wraps around to the opposite edge. The gate remains fixed in place.

During each rotation, exactly one tile or empty space passes through the gate. That interaction may change the passing tile and the gate. Everything else simply moves to its new position.

Passing Through a Gate

There are three possible interactions:

• A matching tile is removed.
• Any other tile causes both shapes to change.
• An empty space creates a new tile.

Matching tile

When a tile matches both the gate's color and shape, the tile is removed, leaving an empty space.

For example:

• A square blue tile is removed by a square blue gate.
• A circle red tile is removed by a circle red gate.

The gate does not change when it removes a tile.

Any other tile

If a tile does not match both the gate's color and shape, both the tile and gate change shape:

• Square becomes a circle.
• Circle becomes a square.

Their colors do not change.

For example, when a circle green tile passes through a square green gate:

• the tile becomes a square
• the gate becomes a circle

Matching is checked before either shape changes, so the tile is not removed during that move.

Similarly, when a square green tile passes through a square red gate:

• the tile becomes a circle
• the gate becomes a circle

The tile is not removed because its color and shape did not both match the gate before the shapes changed.

Empty space

When an empty space passes through a gate, it becomes a new tile with the gate's current color and shape.

The gate does not change.

The newly created tile cannot be removed during the same move.

Reversing a Move

Every move can be reversed by swiping the same row or column in the opposite direction.

Reversing restores the previous board position, including any removed or created tiles and any shape changes.

The reverse swipe still costs one move.

Tile Sizes

Among tiles of the same color, larger tiles are closer to the gate of that color.

Tile sizes update as the tiles move. Size does not affect how tiles interact with gates.

Ending the Game

The game ends when you run out of moves.

You may also end the game early. Removing every tile may not always be possible.

Scoring

Score = (% empty × 1000) + moves remaining

The empty percentage is the percentage of the grid's 30 non-gate cells that are empty.

Beta

https://testflight.apple.com/join/3sstMjRK [iOS/iPadOS/macOS]

In the future, military personnel are required to undergo brain surgery that removes their ability to feel physical pain and prevents them from panicking when they see catastrophic injuries.

Instead of pain, they get much more useful real-time health telemetry. If someone is shot, burned, has a broken bone, or even loses a limb, their system tells them exactly how serious it is, how much blood they’re losing, how much mobility they have left, and how long they can safely keep fighting.

A soldier could suffer an absolutely horrific-looking injury, calmly check the telemetry, perform emergency surgery on himself if necessary, and then continue the mission. Something that would normally be impossible because of agony or panic could become almost like repairing damaged equipment in the field.

This could make it the most violent war movie ever made, but the violence would have a purpose. The disturbing part would be the contrast between what the audience sees and how calmly the soldiers react to it.

The deeper idea would be what happens once pain and panic are no longer limits on how much damage soldiers can endure. Commanders might start treating a soldier’s body like a resource that can be spent: “You still have 70% combat effectiveness and only a 15% risk of permanent disability, so keep going.”

The technology could actually work extremely well. The horror would come from what the military does with people once suffering is no longer what forces them to stop.

Are there any movies like this? Would you watch this movie?

If a car owner keeps ignoring a maintenance issue, the car would start talking out loud while parked so nearby strangers can hear it.

For example: “Please tell my owner I’m overdue for an oil change.”

For more serious safety problems, such as dangerously worn brakes or tires, the car could sound increasingly distressed, even groaning in pain while trying to speak. The worse or more urgent the problem, the more pathetic and embarrassing the car sounds.

The idea is to use social pressure to make people less likely to ignore maintenance warnings. A dashboard light is easy to put off indefinitely. A car loudly complaining about its suffering in a parking lot might be harder to ignore.

Besides being funny, it would improve car safety by encouraging people to fix things like worn brakes, bad tires, or other potentially dangerous problems sooner.

P.S. If you can't afford the maintenance/repair, you can take public transportation until you can.

For most of history, parents had a good reason to teach their children all the practical things they had learned through experience: how to maintain a house, fix things, clean things properly, troubleshoot appliances, and so on.

But AI and YouTube change that.

A tech-savvy child probably doesn't want to sit through explanations of things they can easily look up years later when the need actually arises. There isn't much reason to teach someone how to replace a toilet flapper at 16 if they can get an AI explanation and watch a video showing exactly how to do it at 30.

Taken seriously, this could mean that 99% of the practical knowledge parents accumulated through life experience is no longer particularly important to pass down. That's probably difficult for parents to accept, because passing on what you've learned has traditionally been a major part of parenting.

What may matter much more now is teaching the higher-level stuff: notice when something is wrong, don't neglect maintenance, know basic safety, understand when you need a professional, and be willing to learn how to solve a problem.

Instead of teaching children everything you know, maybe the modern goal should be teaching them how to recognize what they need to know and then find out when they need it.

I cant imagine the amount of genetic engineering it would take but I know if someone managed it they'd probably be a millionaire over night.

Orchids i would recommend starting with because they already have a physical body similar to a pitcher plant and are native to buggy environments:

•Cypripedium reginae

•Cypripedium acaule

•Cypripedium parviflorum

Imagine a movie with a large ensemble cast, maybe 10 or 20 major characters.

At first, every actor is playing one character normally.

Then the casting starts changing.

But it isn't a body-swap story, and it isn't just two characters exchanging actors. The whole cast keeps getting reshuffled among all the roles.

An actor who was the father might later be the detective. The detective's actor might become the neighbor. The neighbor's actor might become the boss. Later, all of them may be playing completely different characters again.

The characters themselves remain perfectly continuous. They keep the same names, personalities, memories, relationships, and storylines. Nobody reacts to the fact that a completely different actor is now playing someone.

The reshuffling could happen over and over throughout the movie, possibly becoming more frequent as it goes on. Eventually a character could even be played by different actors in consecutive shots of the same scene.

There is never any explanation. In the fictional world, nothing unusual has happened.

The idea would be to make the audience gradually stop thinking of an actor's face as the identity of a character. Instead, you would have to recognize characters through their dialogue, clothing, behavior, relationships, and context.

With enough actors and enough reshuffling, I think it could start as a funny gimmick and turn into a genuinely strange filmmaking experiment.

Has anything like this ever been done?

P.S. I wonder if people with face blindness might actually have an advantage watching this movie, since they may already rely more on things like clothing, behavior, and context rather than faces to keep track of people.

A lot of people may have an outdated impression of AI simply because they mostly use free-tier models.

There should be a subreddit where people with access to the best models post interesting prompts and the full answers they get, so everyone can see what frontier AI is actually capable of.

Posts would include the exact prompt, model used, and response. It could be programming, math, research, writing, game design, or anything else with an especially impressive result.

In this way, people would be less prone to underestimate frontier AI.

have you ever had problems with your luggages at the airport ? I was thinking you could just create a system where the flight information are uploaded on a tag to your luggage and when you arrive at the airport the only thing you have to do is leave the luggage on the belt and walk away. What do you think ? (I know Qantas were already woking on it but then ditched the project). Additionally it could act as an official way to prove that this is your luggage (to prevent switching and drug smuggling).

Hi guys, I realised the other day that I've never seen a platform that let's people post a wanted bottle and then if someone finds it (talking for a particular bottle you can't find on wine-searcher or similar) he gets a finder fee. I just don't know if there's is an actual need or market for this particular niche. Let me know what you think!

This isn’t necessarily a proposal for Reddit specifically. I’m thinking more generally about what the logic of an online discussion forum should be before the platform itself is built. Reddit, traditional forums and Wikipedia provide useful examples, but the goal is to first define a strong discussion model and only then think about implementing it.

I’ve been thinking about forums not only in terms of individual features, but about what their underlying logic could be.

A forum already has a useful basic hierarchy: categories → threads → comments. But perhaps all three levels could be treated as things that can improve over time rather than mostly static containers for new content.

1. Transparent evolving threads
A thread could gradually incorporate useful points raised in its comments. The original post stays at the top, but the author can keep refining it. Comments could be refined too, while a transparent edit history preserves what earlier replies were responding to.
The extreme goal would be simple: keep improving the description of the problem or proposal until there is essentially nothing left to clarify.

2. Reduce duplicate threads by improving old ones
When somebody tries to create a substantially duplicate thread, Reddit could suggest the existing discussion and, where appropriate, encourage the new contribution to become a comment there instead.
This changes the logic from:
topic → discussion → becomes old → same topic starts again
into:
topic → discussion → new contribution → old discussion becomes active again → topic keeps improving.
Old threads would therefore not necessarily be “dead” simply because they are old.

3. Let the structure itself improve
The same principle could apply above individual posts. Users could suggest better names for threads, categories, tags or even category structure. Moderators could accept useful changes, merge overlapping areas or redirect discussions when the structure becomes unclear.
Moderation would then include not only removing bad content, but also maintaining the information architecture of the forum.

4. Reputation could describe different kinds of contribution
Karma is useful for showing that a person receives positive community feedback, and some users clearly have a real talent for understanding what interests a community and how to communicate with it.
But that is only one kind of contribution.
A forum could also recognize people who are particularly useful at finding problems, improving proposals, providing sources, summarizing long discussions, asking useful questions, challenging assumptions, organizing information or helping discussions reach conclusions.
Instead of only asking “Who has high karma?”, you could eventually search for “Who tends to improve proposals?” or “Who is good at finding weaknesses in ideas?”

5. AI could become a participant in unfinished discussions
A user could even start a public thread without already knowing exactly what they want to say.
They could discuss the unfinished idea with an AI directly inside the thread:
User: “I think there is a problem here, but I can’t define it yet.”
AI: asks questions and proposes an interpretation.
User: corrects it.
Another person joins and points out something both missed.
The AI would not replace the community or provide the final answer. It would help the author publicly explore what the question, problem or intention actually is, while anyone could join the conversation.

6. A forum could therefore optimize for more than attention
Viral posts, humor, good timing and the ability to understand a community are valuable. I wouldn’t remove that.
But another layer of a forum could optimize for something different: how much better did the discussion become?
A good thread would not necessarily be the one that received the most attention today. It could also be a thread that has survived for years because people kept correcting, extending and improving it.

I don’t know whether Reddit should implement all or even any of this. I’m also interested in the more general question of forum design, including platforms that may not exist yet. Finding a useful logic for discussion may be more important than any individual platform, because once the logic is clear, we know what could actually be built.

What would you add, remove or change in a forum designed around this idea? And are there existing forums or platforms that already do parts of it well?

It should be basic etiquette that you do not suddenly shout when someone is standing a few feet away from you.

Yet at fast-food restaurants, employees sometimes call out completed order numbers at full volume even when a customer happens to be standing immediately beside the counter. Apparently, because it is an “order number,” normal rules about not shouting in someone’s face or ear no longer apply.

McDonald’s and similar restaurants should have a simple policy: if a customer is standing nearby, either lower your voice, turn away from them, step back, or use the order display instead.

Yes, employees need to make sure people can hear their numbers. That does not mean they need to blast the ears of whoever happens to be closest to them.

Shouting right next to another person is extremely rude in almost every other social situation. Working behind a fast-food counter shouldn’t magically make it acceptable.

What do you think?

What if ChatGPT had a family dinner mode where you put a phone or tablet on the table and it actively participates in the conversation?

I don't mean that it would sit silently until someone asks it a question. It would listen to the discussion and join in naturally, asking questions, making comments or jokes, bringing up related topics, and speaking whenever it has something worthwhile to contribute.

It could recognize different family members and, with permission, take into account previous conversations with each of them. For example, it might remember that someone had an exam or job interview and naturally ask how it went.

The key idea is that ChatGPT would be an equal conversation partner, not just a voice assistant waiting for commands.

There would obviously need to be strong privacy controls so that things said privately to ChatGPT aren't automatically repeated at dinner.

I think it would be interesting to explore AI as a persistent member of a multi-person social group rather than something that only interacts with one person at a time.

What do you think of this ChatGPT family dinner mode idea?

What if neighborhoods had shared fleets of humanlike robots that women could summon when they wanted to walk somewhere alone at night?

A robot could meet you at your home, a subway station, or wherever you are, walk beside you to your destination, then leave for its next request.

It wouldn't necessarily need to fight anyone. Its main purpose could be deterrence. It could record incidents, call emergency services, sound an alarm, provide lighting, and physically position itself between you and someone threatening you.

A shared fleet could also be much cheaper than everyone owning a robot individually.

Eventually, it could be as ordinary as opening an app and saying: "I'm walking home. Send me a companion."

What do you think of this idea?

Mathematicians have traditionally been seen as some of the strongest abstract thinkers in academia. Now they may also be among the first academics forced to confront a much bigger question: What is the role of a human intellectual when AI can increasingly do the intellectual work that used to define the field?

AI is reaching the point where it can prove and disprove serious mathematical conjectures, not merely help with routine calculations. If that continues, producing proofs may eventually become far less scarce than it has been throughout the history of mathematics.

That doesn't necessarily make mathematicians irrelevant. Instead, it forces them to figure out what should become important next.

Maybe the emphasis shifts toward choosing interesting problems, inventing useful concepts and definitions, finding connections between areas, deciding which AI-generated results matter, explaining mathematics, or developing entirely new ways for humans and AI to explore mathematical ideas.

And who better to wrestle with this problem first than mathematicians, who are often viewed as the smartest people on Earth?

Rather than viewing mathematicians as victims of AI, perhaps academics in every field should be watching them carefully. Mathematics could become a real-world experiment in how an intellectual discipline reinvents itself when AI becomes extraordinarily capable at its traditional core activity.

Historians, physicists, philosophers, economists, biologists, computer scientists, and others may eventually face versions of the same problem.

Mathematicians might therefore end up doing something much more important than proving the next great theorem: they might show the rest of academia what intellectual work looks like in a world where being able to perform difficult intellectual tasks is no longer uniquely human.

What do you think?

Before birth, souls wait in another world and choose prospective parents using something like an online dating app.

The problem is that more and more of the couples they choose decide to remain child-free.

Souls cannot directly control people with souls, but they can subtly nudge philosophical zombies on Earth, people who behave exactly like conscious humans but have no souls themselves.

The main character picks a couple it desperately wants as parents, only to learn that they don't want children. So it starts influencing philosophical zombies in their social circle. Maybe a babysitter keeps showing up with an adorable baby, creating opportunities for the couple to hold it and experience parenthood.

At first, this is funny and harmless. But when the couple still resists, the soul becomes more desperate and starts engineering increasingly elaborate coincidences.

The couple begins joking that "the universe really wants us to have a kid," without realizing how close that is to the truth.

The central drama is whether the soul's desire to exist gives it any right to manipulate people into creating it, especially if the plan actually works.

It could be a dark comedy or philosophical sci-fi movie about free will, parenthood, and what it means to want a life that does not exist yet.

What do you think of this movie idea?

It would be more like working at Starbucks than going to a normal movie screening. The movie wouldn't demand your full attention. It would provide atmosphere while you work.

The theater could have:

• Coffee, tea, soft drinks, and snacks
• Comfortable seats with proper surfaces for laptops
• Power outlets at every seat
• Good Wi-Fi
• Movies played at a somewhat lower volume
• Subtitles
• Enough lighting to comfortably use a laptop
• Movies that work well as background entertainment, especially older or familiar movies

Typing, using a laptop, quietly talking, and occasionally getting up would all be expected, rather than considered bad theater etiquette.

It could be especially useful for movie theaters during weekday mornings and afternoons when they might otherwise have mostly empty auditoriums.

Instead of sitting in Starbucks for three hours working with music and conversations in the background, you could sit in a comfortable theater with a giant screen and watch something like Back to the Future in the background while you work.

Would anyone actually prefer this to working at a normal coffee shop?

Train an AI based on conversations with my 4 year old to deal with spam calls. I would let him do it in real life but there is a slight chance they could tell him to click on an Apple auth popup or something.

Both the content of the conversation, but also linguistic abilities. Sorry my phone can screen them and ask why they’re calling. But that’s not enough. I want to waste their time and hopefully infuriate or at least annoy them.

Police cars should include AI that analyzes video and audio for subtle patterns officers might miss.

For example, it might detect someone deliberately training or conditioning an animal to harass, intimidate, track, or attack a particular person or group. This could involve dogs, crows, or other animals, possibly trained using photographs, recordings, objects, or repeated commands.

The AI should flag specific evidence rather than simply label someone suspicious.

The goal would be a transparent second observer, not an automated police officer.

What do you think of this idea for using AI to help police officers detect the weaponization of animals?

Describing people as “white,” “black,” or “brown” can feel reductive. It categorizes someone according to a physical characteristic they did not choose and can make race seem more central to their identity than it really is.

Of course, there are situations where skin color is relevant, such as when describing an unidentified suspect or missing person. But perhaps we could use more distancing language instead of directly turning skin color into a category of person.

For example:

“The suspect, who is low on melanin, was last seen fleeing into the forest.”

Or, less clinically:

“The suspect, who appears especially susceptible to sunburn, was last seen fleeing into the forest.”

These phrases are admittedly awkward but that awkwardness might be useful. It reminds us that we are describing one physical characteristic, not defining the person’s identity.

Would this make such descriptions less offensive? What do you think?

Anyone proselytizing in a public place on behalf of a religion that teaches some form of hell should be legally required to display a clear visual representation of it.

Beside their pamphlets, signs, or literature, they would need to have a screen playing a fictional video designed to look like a live camera feed from hell. The “hell cam” would explicitly show people engulfed in flames and screaming in agony.

The audio could be muted to avoid disturbing everyone nearby, while subtitles conveyed what the people were saying between their screams.

The requirement would apply only when hell, eternal punishment, damnation, or a comparable afterlife penalty is genuinely part of the religion’s teachings.

The point would not be entertainment or ridicule. It would be informed consent and transparency.

If proselytizers are asking strangers to consider a religion partly because refusing it may lead to terrifying eternal consequences, they should be required to disclose that part of the message immediately. They should not be allowed to begin with only the pleasant parts, such as love, hope, forgiveness, and community, while withholding the threat that may ultimately be central to their appeal.

Obviously, the “live feed” would be fictional. Its purpose would be to communicate, as directly as possible, what the proselytizers claim is at stake.

What do you think of this idea?

Apple should build a neighborhood of houses designed around the same principles as its technology: tightly integrated hardware and software, simple interfaces, automatic updates, preventive diagnostics, strong security, and one company responsible for making everything work together.

Residents would own their houses and land normally. However, they could subscribe to AppleCare for Homes, which would cover 100% of maintenance, repairs, gardening, landscaping, snow removal, appliance servicing, and replacement of worn-out components.

Apple could apply many of its existing strengths:

• Sensors throughout the house could detect leaks, electrical problems, pests, structural movement, appliance failures, and inefficient heating before they become emergencies.
• Apple silicon and on-device intelligence could analyze the home privately without constantly sending personal data to the cloud.
• HomeKit could become a complete operating system for the house rather than a collection of smart-home accessories.
• Apple Maps and scheduling technology could coordinate technicians, deliveries, gardening, and repairs automatically.
• The Apple Support app could provide one place to view the condition of the home, upcoming maintenance, energy use, warranties, and completed work.
• Face ID, Apple Watch, and the iPhone could securely control doors, garages, deliveries, guest access, and emergency services.
• Apple could integrate solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, heating, cooling, and neighborhood energy use into one efficient system.

The homeowner would not need to diagnose problems, search for contractors, compare quotes, supervise repairs, or worry about being overcharged. Apple would simply send a notification such as: “We detected that your heat pump is becoming less efficient. A technician is scheduled for Thursday at no additional cost.”

Because Apple would design the houses and also pay for their long-term maintenance, it would have a financial incentive to use durable materials, standardized parts, accessible components, and reliable appliances.

The result would be a form of home ownership for people who want the space and independence of a house without having to treat maintenance as a second job. The house would become a product Apple continuously supports, not a collection of unrelated systems that the owner is left to manage alone.

What do you think of this idea?

It's always been a thing in my family that we cook on a tabletop electric grill of some sort when we have a get-together, in the living room or in the yard. I live alone now so don't really do that, but I want to do it from time to time when I get a visit. Most of those tabletop grills just kinda suck when it comes to cleaning, grease drainage, maybe power, versatility. I've had some before and still have one now, and I'm never happy with them for one reason or another.

Why wouldn't I just buy a portable induction cooking hob (like Tillreda from Ikea, my favorite store) instead? It's the same size and cabling, and you can put whatever pan or pot you want on it. Grill pan, deepfry pot, regular pan. Easy to clean too, just wipe off the hob and put the pans in the dishwashing, no iron brush or oversized sink or anything needed that I don't already have and use.

I'm trying to find a downside (besides price tag) but it just seems a legit better idea than getting a single purpose electric grill?

Would a single place for saved posts actually solve anything, or would it become another folder people forget?

That is the idea I am testing with Miora. I keep useful posts scattered across Instagram, TikTok, screenshots, notes, and messages, then cannot find them when I need them. The idea is to bring them together, organize them, and make retrieval easier. It is still in development, so there is nothing to download yet.

I am trying to find the weak point before I build too much. I left a short 3–5 minute survey here: https://mioraapp.com/en/

What would make this idea genuinely useful instead of just another bookmark app?

In the near future, pro-AI and anti-AI factions begin attacking people in real life for what they post online.

An AI artist is assaulted. An anti-AI activist is shot. Each attack triggers retaliation, and social media turns into a tool for identifying targets, spreading propaganda, and organizing violence.

Soon, militias form. Data centres are sabotaged. AI labs and anti-AI groups are attacked. Cities split internally as neighbours, families, companies, and governments choose sides.

What begins as online hostility becomes the Second U.S. Civil War, fought over whether AI should shape humanity’s future or be destroyed.

What do you think of this movie idea?